The "Celts" In Concept And Reality

Referring to the Celts, the first impression of people is that, they are the mortal enemy of ancient Romans, or that, the people who are content to retain sovereignty over parts of modern Britain, live in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, consider themselves to be the direct descendant of ancient Celts.But recently, these popular viewpoints are suffering query from academia. Some scholars contend that, using "Celts" which has a unified connotation to refer to the tribal groups which still live in primitive tribe stage, saturated with diversity, is unreasonable.Some others even affirm that, there is no so-called "Celts" at all, which as an ethnic group in history books is just an invention of classical writers. Consequently, the confrontation of old and new points caused a controversy finally. Which side is more reasonable in the debate? In this paper, author intends to make historical study as a breakthrough, gives personal perspective on the connotation of "Celts". Concretely speaking, this paper is divided into five parts:In the first section, the paper will focus on the international and domestic research situation and the debate background.The second section mainly starts with the source of the "Celts", classical literature, hope to investigate the similarities and differences between the names which used by Greek and Roman writers, outline the general living area of ancient Celts on the base of the existing analysis of foreign scholars.Section three will probe that linguists how to define the scope of "Celtic" since the Renaissance, in terms of history of Celtic languages, and point out the differences between the views of linguists and classicist.Section four describes the development of archaeological knowledge about "Celts", since the mid-19th century when archaeology rose,reveals various meanings of "Celts" in the field of archaeology.In the end, author will compare various viewpoints during the Celtic study, and present personal opinion.